Falling Up
by SpraceJunkie
Summary: You don't fall into love, love is more like falling up. You can't control where you go and if you land, and you can't stop the fall yourself. Modern Sprace AU.
1. Chapter 1

It was rather hard to forget the first time you saw somebody when you met them when the first glimpse was of their blond hair hanging down over your window as their face peered in. That's one reason I would never forget the first time I ever saw Spot Conlon. Another was what he said after he fell and broke his arm from it.

"Dang it. I really wanted that cherry." It turned out he had dropped a cherry out of the window of his apartment above my house, and had hung upside down to try and get it. I'd looked over just in time to see him flip down and spend a grand total of about a minute hanging majestically, grasping at the gutter for his cherry, before he'd fallen onto the ground two stories below and break his arm in two places. I might have known a new family had moved into our apartment, but I wasn't aware that they had a kid my age, and so I was not prepared for his face to fall into my life. In such a freaking dramatic way.

"Why were you hanging in my window?" In all my ten year old wisdom, I didn't think to ask if he was okay.

"I wanted my cherry." He was splayed out on the lawn, looking for all the world like he was resting, until he tried to sit up, moving his arm. "Ow." That was all he said, but I saw the tears in his eyes. He blinked rapidly, lying back down. "Owowow." He said quietly.

"Are you okay? Should I get somebody?"

"Nah, I just have to shake it off." He tried to sit up again, clutching his arm to his chest. "I just have to get upstairs and maybe put some ice on it." He climbed the stairs up to the apartment, and I didn't see him again until school started.

I never learned his name, because I didn't have a real excuse to know him and I didn't want my parents to think I'd been snooping or anything. Three weeks after his fall, school began and when I walked out to the bus stop he was wearing a neon yellow cast under his flannel. He didn't say a word to me, but he sat next to me on the bus, looking out the window while I caught up with my friends.

"Who's the new kid, Racer?" Jack asked me, nodding at the boy in the cast. I shrugged.

"Moved in upstairs. We'll meet him in class." That was all we said about him until class, when Miss Rosalyn introduced him.

"Everyone, this is Sean Conlon, new this year. Would you like to say something about yourself, Sean?"

"My name is Spot, not Sean, I like cherries but pineapples are evil, and I moved from Brooklyn." The look in his eyes dared us to make fun of him for his choice of nickname or his declaration of fruit choice. Nobody took the challenge, and he sat down.

"Hey Race, ask him to sit with us, hey?" Specs poked me. "He looks alone. I wouldn't wanna be alone on the first day of fifth grade." I sighed and walked to Spot's desk at lunchtime.

"You wanna sit with us? We got room." Spot looked at me suspiciously, but picked up his Star Wars lunchbox and sat down with my group of friends.

"So you came from Brooklyn? What's it like in the city? Did you ride the subway? Did it smell bad? Or did it smell good? Is Connecticut much different from Brooklyn? Do you like it here? What happened to your arm? When did you move here? Do you know Race? Why is your nickname Spot? Are you gonna be friends with us?" Crutchy babbled. Spot looked at him like nobody had ever talked to him so much before.

"Yeah. Different. Yeah. Sometimes. Not usually, except at Christmas. Yes. Dunno. Fell out of my apartment. A month ago. Not really. Because. I dunno." He said, semi-quietly. "Why do you call him Race?" He pointed at me.

"Because he hasn't lost a playground race yet! They call me Crutchy because I had a crutch until last year when I got my brace, and him Specs cause he's got glasses, and him Swifty cause he's almost as fast as Race, and him Snitch cause he's a rat but he's still nice, and him Jack cause it's cooler than Francis, and him Skittery cause… I dunno why. He's Dutchy cause he's from the moon, and he's-"

"I get it! I get it! Lot's of nicknames!" Spot's eyes darted around as he tried to track who was who.

"Crutchy, don't freak him out." Snoddy said calmly. "Welcome to our group, Spot." Spot nodded, taking out a Fluffernutter and starting to eat.

He had to be asked over to our table the first few weeks, but he eventually started just coming over. He loosened up around us, and we soon learned he wasn't as quiet as he'd seemed. Every word that left his mouth was some sort of joke or threat, or sometimes just something really random. He apparently didn't say anything random except to me, though, because nobody else noticed it. We would sometimes hang out after school, usually in my backyard, which I guess was also his.

"Remember when I fell out of my window?" He said suddenly.

"Yeah, why?"

"I really wanted that cherry. You think it's still there?"

"No. The birds probably ate it." He looked sad for a minute, then brightened. That was when I started to get nervous, when his eyes lit up and he grinned at me.

"Then let's find some Twinkies. I have an idea."

"Uh-oh." He was still grinning, and I could practically hear his brain thinking.

"We need Twinkies, chocolate sauce, sprinkles, some dirt and maybe some milk." He ran off. "You're in charge of sprinkles and milk!" He yelled over his shoulder. I shook my head and did what he said. There wasn't much of a way around it.

That prank was the start of a long and beautiful friendship. He was a _genius_ when it came to pranking people in the most detailed schemes I'd never thought of. He was also a master at disguising his voice, so when I had him sleep over we made a lot of prank calls. He was always so careful not to get caught, and his one condition was that we weren't hurting anyone. His non-pranking adventures, however, were not so nice. If somebody insulted him, he fought them at recess, and he always won. He got sent to the principal's office at least once a week, and at home he got hurt doing stupid things all the time. He never did repeat his falling out of his window, but he did fall off our garage roof a few times, out of several different trees at different points in time, and nobody would ever forget the time he crashed a bike into our porch when all our friends were over, knocking himself out and taking out Snoddy, Swifty, Skittery and me on his way to somehow knocking the railing off. Lesson learned from that experience: Never give Spot a bike and stand in his way. Also, it really, _really_ hurts to get run over by a bike.

Our relationship changed in high school, when we were split into a few different schools based on where we lived. The high schools were in different places than the middle and elementary schools, so we were separated. We lost Snoddy, Skittery, Dutchy, Itey, Pie-eater, Kid Blink and a few others, and our group was down to me, Jack, Specs, Spot, Mush, Crutchy and a couple more. It was weird, not seeing the rest of them all the time, even though we all kept in touch, and me and Spot got even closer.

"Do you remember Brooklyn?" I asked him one night, when we were outside, watching a meteor shower for a homework assignment.

"Yeah." He didn't elaborate, so I prodded at him.

"Did you like it there?"

"Sometimes. When I wasn't at school or home, and nobody could touch me. I felt like I was the king when I was on the streets, even though the older kids only let me hang out with them because my brother made them."

"You have a brother?" He turned to face me, instead of the sky.

"Had. I had a brother."

"Oh. Sorry."

"He was killed. We don't know why, and the police said it was just a random shooting. That's why we moved here."

"Oh." I didn't know anything else to say.

"One day I'm gonna find out who did it." Spot said seriously. "I'm gonna be a police officer and solve it, so my family knows. It's not okay not knowing." Spot rolled back over onto his back again and looked up at the sky. Under the starlight, his hair, darkening as he grew up but still bond, seemed to glow with the flashes of shooting stars, and his eyes had their reflections in them. Beautiful wasn't a word I'd usually use to describe the short boy from Brooklyn, but under the shower of falling space rock, he was. He looked, as cheesy as it sounds, like a Greek demigod, noble and proud and yet with so much sadness in him, in those few moments. I think it was that night that everything started, when I started to realize who I was and who Spot was to me. That was when I started, I think, to fall for the boy from Brooklyn who had fallen into my life so many years ago.

 **This should end up at around five chapters, I think. There's probably a one chapter margin of error in that guess, though, in either direction.**


	2. Chapter 2

We had been through a lot, Spot and me. I mean, all of us had been through a lot together, but me and Spot seemed to bear the brunt of it. My mom got cancer when I was in sixth grade, and even though she pulled through she was never the same as she was before. She was almost depressed, always quiet. Sometimes, when Dad was away on business or something, the house was so quiet that I had to go somewhere else to escape it. Spot and I built a treehouse in my backyard for times like that. It ended up being where we could count on each other to listen. When Spot got the news that he was moving again, even though it was only a few houses down, that was where we spent the night, and where we designed our system of banners to tell each other we were up there. Red for urgent, blue for bored, orange for needing or wanting to talk, and yellow for wanting to be alone. Yellow was the flag we used the least often. Orange was flung out the window at least four times a week.

We saw each other in school, but we couldn't really _talk_ there. At school, there's always somebody close enough to hear, always somebody who could be listening in and hearing our secrets, and so we couldn't say the important things there. I mean, we could talk about stuff like homework, sports, normal, everyday things, but the most important things, our hopes, dreams, secrets, all that sort of thing were only talked about in our treehouse. Only to one another.

I learned a lat about his family, including his older brother.

"His name was Shane. He was six years older, but he always took care of me. Better than our parents, especially before Dad left. Mom got better once she met Kyle, and now they're both great, but when Dad was still around and they were fighting, Shane took me out with his friends to get me out of the house. Well, he did once Dad gave me this." He gestured at the scar on his eyebrow. "Before that he just gave me advice on how to hide when the yelling started. I don't think I ever saw him as angry as he was when he came home and saw me bleeding. He yelled at Dad, but couldn't do much. After that, he always took me with him when he was out."

"What did you do?" He laughed.

"I thought I was so cool. He used to take me down to the bridge, and lean out over the water and just yell. Not even words, just constant noise. He told me it made him feel powerful, that he could make enough noise that it could reach the river, even though we were surrounded by cars and people." He smiled. "And once he and his friends took me all the way to Manhattan, and we made fun of the rich people. We saw some like right out of the movies; I think even one with a dog in her purse." We both started laughing at that picture.

"Sounds fun."

"Yeah." He sighed. "I was the little brother of that whole group of boys. They were the only ones who showed up at Shane's...at his funeral. Beside me and Mom and Kyle, I mean. And they said goodbye, too. Nobody at school did that." He was talking more quietly now. "They...they were with him when...when it happened. He'd left me a home that day, since Kyle and Mom were good with me, and then Bumper came running in yelling, and I couldn't understand him at all but Kyle ran out and Mom started crying and then the police came and I figured it out. They had been coming home, only a couple of blocks away. And a car came up, stopped next to them. They didn't see who it was, and they fired a couple of shots at the group and sped away, and then Shane just collapsed, I guess, and he was bleeding. The ambulance was too late." He wasn't crying. He almost never cried. But his voice was dry and shaky.

"Wow."

"I was only nine. We stuck out the year in the city, but Mom couldn't bear it anymore, so we moved out here." He sighed. "I guess I'm glad. But sometimes I miss it." He leaned back, slouching against the wall.

That was the end of that conversation, but not the end of the subject. He seemed to like to talk to me about the city, and how life had been before. He also enjoyed listening to me talk about stuff, even though nothing really exciting happened to me before he moved in. Our friendship was strong through it all, and that treehouse was the grounding point of it. That was where we shared it all, where we worked together when we needed to. It was where I began to realize that I was in love with him.

The blue flag was flung out over the side facing my house, so I knew he was up there. I climbed up and he was sitting there was a stack of board games.

"What's with the games, Spot?" He smirked at me.

"I'm bored, so we're playing games. I hate Tuesdays in the summer."

"Only Tuesdays?"

"Well, Monday, Wednesday and Saturday I go to the pool. Thursdays and Fridays are when we see the guys, and Sunday is chore day. Tuesdays are boring." He pulled Clue out of the bottom of his stack. "Let's play this first." He flipped out the board. "I'll be Green."

"Then I guess I'll be Plum." He grinned at me.

"What were you doing? You got out here quick."

"I was listening to music. Drake."

"Nice." He nodded at me. "Jack told me that he was going out west for the rest of the summer. Some art show or something."

"Yeah, he sounded really excited."

"I think Dave went with him."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Pick?" He offered me the stack of room cards. I chose one, and he moved on to the weapons and people, slipping the three chosen ones into the envelope and hiding it under the board. "You roll first."

"Seven."

"Nine." He grinned at me, rolling again and moving his piece. I caught myself watching him, seeing the way the sunlight reflected off his hair and in his eyes. "Miss Scarlet in the ballroom with the knife." I was too distracted to answer. "Race?" He waved his hand in front of my face, snapping me out of my staring at him.

"Huh?"

"I guessed. Miss Scarlet in the ballroom, with the knife."

"Oh, uh…" I scanned my cards quickly. "Miss Scarlet."

"Okay." He marked it down, and I was staring at him again. At the way his arm moved and his face twitched in a half smile. "You're staring." He said without looking up.

"Am not!" Now he met my eye and grinned.

"Childish much?"

"Shut up." He raised an eyebrow at me, and my stomach did something funny, like a flip. Butterflies. That was new.

"Well, you _were_ staring. Pretty obviously."

"What _ever_."

"Fine. It's your turn." I rolled, ignoring Spot's lingering smirk every time I made eye contact.

"Mr. Green in the study with the rope."

"Rope." He was watching me out of the corner of his eye, I could tell, but I refused to look at him again until he was moving his piece. "You're staring again. It's like you're a kid with a crush."

"I am _not_ staring!" He smirked at me again, and my stomach did a flip again.

"Sure, Race. Whatever you say." He said sarcastically. "Colonel Mustard in hall with the knife. Thanks for moving me to the study, by the way."

"I have Mustard."

"Cool." We kept playing for a while, and even though I tried to not, I caught myself looking at him a few times. "Ha! Solved it!"

"Good for you. But it's my turn to guess, and I know too, so too bad."

"Yeah right!"

"My guess is...Mrs. White...in the library...with...the...lead pipe!"

"Dramatic schoolgirl much?" Spot grumbled, pulling the envelope out from his side of the board and handing it to me. "I bet you're wrong."

"Lead pipe." I flipped the lead pipe card over. "Mrs. White. And...the library." He lifted his lip at me in some sort of snarl.

"Butthead."

"Did you just call me that fifth grade insult?"

"Butthead, buttfart, idiot." He used no inflection whatsoever, just listing off random grade school insults. "Poophead. Dumbo, stupid, copycat."

"Copycat?"

"Copycat." He confirmed. "Copycat, poophead, idiot."

"You already said idiot. And poophead."

"Well you are." He snarled at me, a totally over exaggerated expression. "All of them."

"Well then." His face melted into a smile, a huge, bright smile that few people ever saw on his face. He didn't smile like that often. That time, my stomach didn't just flutter, it flipped several times, and I was smiling back at him. It was then that I came to the crashing realization, the realization that changed my life. I, Antonio "Race" Higgins, was in love with Spot Conlon. My best friend. I was in love with my best friend. I was in _love_ with a _boy_. And really, I couldn't be happier. I didn't really understand it, but I knew, instinctively, that it was a good thing. I just knew it.

 **Chapter two! Yay! Sorry if it was a little bit boring, but it will be kind of influential later.**


	3. Chapter 3

I guess realizing that I loved Spot wasn't as life changing as the weeks, or months, really, that came after it. I mean, I had suddenly realized that I liked boys, and I wasn't sure if it was just Spot or if I had had crushes on boys before, or even if I had ever liked girls or if I still did like girls and I liked boys too. Basically, it was just a confusing time. I knew I liked him a lot, loved him, but I didn't quite know what to do with that feeling. I didn't want to keep it from him, but I couldn't tell him either. The result was awkwardness, something that Spot and I had never had before. I felt like we didn't talk like we used to, just spewing out the thoughts that rose to the surface of our brain, because I was constantly analyzing everything I wanted to say to make sure I didn't say anything telling. He noticed, I knew it, and he was less open too. I didn't like it, but I didn't know what to do about it. Eventually, I sought out the voice of reason himself, the person who was always willing to listen without judging. David Jacobs.

"-and I'm not sure what to do about it! I mean, I want to tell him, but I don't know how he'd feel about it, and I don't wanna mess up our friendship, you know? But I hate not being able _talk_ to him! I wanna go back to normal!" I sighed, probably incredibly overdramatically, and flopped back onto David's couch. "What am I supposed to do?" David sat back and looked at me for a minute, thinking.

"You can't just wait it out. He might know something is up, but he won't know what. If you're being that careful, he won't ever know unless you tell him."

"But what if it messes up our friendship!"

"It seems like keeping it a secret messes up your friendship." He thought again. "But maybe start with coming out to him? Tell him you're gay before you tell him you like him?"

"But what if-"

"Stop what-iffing! If he's really your best friend, he won't care that you like boys! And maybe eventually, you'll be able to tell him that you like him. Just tell him like you told me, except, you know, minus that fact that you like _him_."

"How do you expect me to just _tell_ him? I can't just come out and _say_ it!"

"That's what you did to me!"

"You're different! You're not _Spot_!"

"No, I'm not, and I know you haven't known me for as long as you have Jack, Specs, Spot, or any of them, but I am your friend, right?"

"Yeah."

"And you trusted me enough to tell me, right? And to give you advice, right?"

"Yeah."

"So then can't you trust my advice? I _know_ Spot, not as well as you, but I do know him, and I know that he won't care that you're gay!"

"But he would care that I'm in love with him!"

"You can keep that under wraps until you're ready to tell him! But if it bothers you this much that things aren't like how they were before, then you have to take some kind of action! Telling him is the only thing I can think of, unless you want to stop being friends with him!"

"Of course not!"

"Then that's all I have to say." David stood up. "I hope you listen." I sighed, thinking about everything he'd said.

"I was." I made my choice. I _had_ to tell him. I missed how things were too much to not, because David was right. "I'll tell him. Soon."

"Good for you. Want a soda?"

"No, I should go." I stood up. "Thanks for listening, Dave."

"I'm always here, Race."

"You here for studying?" I cracked. "Because midterms are coming up and I'm screwed." David laughed.

"Anytime." He opened the door for me. "See ya around, Race."

"See ya. And thanks again, Dave."

"No problem." I walked the few blocks home, thinking everything over.

The next day, I flung the orange and red flags out of the window. That was not a combination we'd used often before, but I felt it was justified. I urgently needed to talk to Spot, to tell him. He was up in the treehouse with me in minutes.

"What's the matter? Did something happen?" He looked worried, but the look on his face could not compare to the way my stomach was twisting. I felt like I was going to be sick, and I was sure that if I hadn't been sitting down, I would have fallen over the moment his face appeared in the opening.

"N-no. I just...I have something…" My throat was dry, and I couldn't force words out.

"What?" His eyes scanned over my face, trying to pick out what was happening.

"I have something to tell you." My words sounded forced to me, and I could tell Spot heard the tone in it as well.

"You can tell me anything. Always." He looked right into my eyes,

"I know. It's just...this is...different, I guess." He watched me, taking in my shaky breathing and the way I was wiping my palms. "I...I'm...I'm gay, Spot." He kept looking at me, but something in his eyes shifted. Like, now, instead of being worried, he was just slightly confused, and there was something else there too.

"You're...gay." He didn't have any inflection in his words. "As in...you like boys." I nodded, unable to speak anymore. I was even more nervous than before, if that was possible. I wasn't sure what was running through his mind. And then the corners of his mouth twitched, and he smiled at me slightly, the nervousness not totally gone but much less. "That makes everything _so_ much easier." The last sentence was whispered, so I almost couldn't hear it over the breeze in the fall leaves.

"What?"

"I was going to tell you something too, only I was waiting for a good moment. I...am gay too, Race, and I was scared to tell you. I thought you guessed, and that's why were weren't talking as much, and I thought you didn't like it." He rushed his words, breaking his normal smooth demeanor. My mouth opened and closed a few times before I could react.

"You...you're gay? And you thought I would care?"

"Well, can you honestly tell me you don't? In some way?"

"Well, I mean, I care, but not like, I mean, in a _bad_ way."

"See?"

"But I didn't _know_. I thought you knew about me, and that's why things were awkward."

"Guess we need to communicate better, yeah?" His smile was growing, spreading across his face in a way that made me melt. I could feel myself smiling too, just as big.

"Yeah." He bit his lip, when he made eye contact with me, clearly trying to keep back a laugh. I don't really know what was so funny, but something was absolutely hilarious. We gave up fighting back the laughter, and suddenly we were both collapsed on top of each other, laughing hysterically. Things were pretty much what they were like before I ever realized how I felt about him, except that everything was different. Now there was a chance. A chance for us to become _us_. To be a couple. Maybe not much of a chance, but it was there. And it changed _everything_. It seemed like my sixteenth year was one of constant shifting and flipping and confusion.

After we told each other, things were pretty much back to normal. I mean, I still caught myself staring at him more often than was acceptable, but we could talk freely around each other again. I didn't really make much sense, considering I was still keeping it a secret that I wasn't just gay, I loved Spot, but it was true. We were more...free around each other, more open. It was nice. Just like it had been before. We could slouch against the worn boards of the treehouse together, play games, do homework, study, and, most importantly, talk. About anything and everything. That was what I had missed the most out of anything before, and it was back. We were talking about stuff we used to, whether that was our friends, our pasts, school, whatever. We got back into just hanging out, being friends. I loved it. I loved being friends with him as much as I loved him, and that was why I scared to tell him. I treasured him as friend too much to risk it for the slight chance that he _might_ like me back.

So I continued in my silence, even through the talks and lazy days spent together. I never told him, no matter how great of an opportunity I was given or how much I wanted to. I wasn't the daring one. That had always been Spot. _I_ never took risks on my own, _I_ always tagged along for the ride. So that's what I did. Nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

"Have you told him yet?"

"He knows I'm gay, Dave."

"I _know_ that, but does he know you _like_ him?" David sounded exasperated.

"No." I looked down. "I don't know how to tell him."

"Quick question. Are you two going to the same school next year?"

"Dunno."

"We, don't you want him to know this year in case you don't end up in the same college?"

"But I-"

"Racetrack Higgins, I am sick and tired of your "what-ifing" and "but I's"! Just _tell_ him! Its clearly driving you insane! This is the fourth time this _week_ you've come to see me!"

"But what-"

"Ah!"

"If he doesn't like me back things will just go back to being awkward again!"

"Race! Holy cow!"

"What?" David sighed.

" _Never_ mind! But you _need_ to tell him."

"I don't-"

"Treehouse. Sit him down. Say you like him."

"I can't!"

"You can, and you will! Soon!" David stood up from where he was sitting across from me. "Promise me!"

"I'm not promising you that!"

"Promise!"

"No!"

"Promise!"

"I won't!"

"Do it!"

"Dave-"

"Promise!"

"Fine!" I burst. "Fine! I promise I'll tell him at some point this year!"

"Soon!"

"Okay!"

"Good." David sat back down. "Let me know when you do. I'll need to prepare." I sighed and sat back again.

"I don't want to tell him."

"Yes you do. You're just scared of what his reaction will be."

"Ugh. Why are you so good at this?" David laughed.

"Sarah is my sister and Jack is my best friend. I have to be good at this." I had to smile at that.

"Fair point."

"Yeah. They seem to have a lot of emotional crises."

"As bad as mine have been?"

"Oh, Saz has had a few."

"Not Jack?"

"Jack's have been worse." I laughed. "Now get out there and tell him before I do! You promised!"

"Yeah, yeah. I know."

"Good. Just don't forget."

"I won't." I stood up and walked to the door. "But if you tell him, I will get payback."

"Sure, Race." David laughed, shutting the door behind me. I headed for home, already starting to regret making that promise.

If I had been nervous about coming out to Spot, I was terrified to even consider telling him I liked him. I hadn't even figured out how or when I was going to do it, and I was making myself sick over it. It didn't help that things were awkward again. I really hated it, to the point where I almost wished I'd never fallen for him in the first place. I planned for weeks. I must have thought of at least twenty different ways to tell him, and none of them seemed right. It didn't help that whenever David saw us together, whether with other people or just us, he gave me a pointed look. Every time. Without fail.

"Why is Dave looking at you like that?"

"What?"

"Why is Dave giving you the 'just-do-it' look? And don't deny it, because he totally is."

"How am I supposed to know? He's David." I could feel myself blushing, though, and I knew Spot had noticed.

"And now you're blushing." Yep. Of course he had. "C'mon. I'm not stupid." And another of course, it had to be one of the times his slight Brooklyn accent appeared, which made me blush harder.

"It's nothing, Spot. Just something stupid." Meaning not something I was planning on saying in the school hallway. Being out had been awkward enough, and admitting a crush would have made things even worse.

"I still wanna know."

"I-I'll tell you later, okay?" He looked at me, scrunching his forehead.

"Okay. Treehouse after school." He left no room for argument.

"Sure."

The rest of the day was torture. I knew Spot knew me well enough to be able to tell if I didn't say what was exactly on my mind. I was going to have to tell him.

"Hey Race."

"Shut up, David." I closed my locker hard and started to walk to the busses. "Thanks a lot."

"For what?"

"Spot's gonna interrogate me after school because he saw you giving me that look. So thanks a lot."

"You said you were going to tell-"

"But I'm not ready yet!"

"Oops."

"Go away."

"Tell me how it goes!" He smiled at me, a stupid, infuriating grin. "See ya around!" I sat on the bus, and I could feel Spot watching me from his seat a few rows back. He was in the treehouse as soon as humanly possible, sitting against the wall.

"What's up, Race? Something's bothering you."

"I-it's really nothing, Spot."

"It's making things different again. I don't like it." He crossed his arms. "At all. So what's up?" I could feel my palms sweating, and I felt like I was going to be sick. Again.

"I-um-I…" I took a deep breath, and tried to control my words. "I-I like you alot and I have for a long time and I had to tell you because I hate keeping secrets but I didn't want to tell you because I hate it even more when things are awkward and I didn't want to make things awkwards again, but that didn't work and things were awkward anyway and I-" My stream of words was cut off by something, and I realized I had screwed my eyes shut during my spiel. I opened them and Spot was right there. _Really_ close. Like, _really, really_ close. So close that my brain shut off and I pushed him back. Pretty hard.

"Ow! Race!" I was gasping. I was the most overdramatic person in the whole world, sitting back against rough wall of the treehouse, gasping. My chest was heaving. And my brain was _not_ working. At all. I couldn't figure out what was going on.

"Wha-wha-what? What? I-what?" Spot was rubbing his back, blushing fiercely.

"I, um, I didn't get this wrong, did I? I mean, you meant you like, _like_ me, like me, right?"

"I, uh, well, yeah."

"So why did you push me back so _hard_?"

"I, um, I…" I trailed off. He was half smirking, half smiling at me, and it made the blush I already had deepen. "I dunno." It came out as almost a whisper. Spot moved closer, and my stomach flipped over itself.

"Wanna try this whole thing again?"

"Uh...sure?"

"Okay." He coughed lightly. "So, what's up?"

"I um, like you. A lot."

"I like you too, Race." Then he was close to me again, and this time I didn't push him away when his lips touched mine. He pulled back after only a second, but this time he didn't sit far back. He stayed close to me, leaning forward across his legs. "A lot." He smiled at me, kissing me gently again. "Wanna go out with me sometime?"

"Sure." He flipped himself around so he was sitting against the same wall I was, almost against my side.

"Cool."

"Cool." I was still blushing, and so was he, but he was giving me a smirk that told me he was happy, and I was smiling so wide it felt like my face was going to break. When he looked over at me, and his ice-blue eyes met my brown ones, that smirk melted into a grin to match my own. We sat up there for a while, and eventually he moved close enough that he was touching me, leaning against me. Just like I'd wanted for so long and thought I'd never have. And now I did. And it felt right.

 _ **A little fluff never hurt**_ __ _ **anybody!**_ **I whisper maniacally to myself as I finish editing this chapter at 2:45 AM while binge watching Disney Channel Original movies on Netflix.**


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